A ticket provided with a magnetic recording layer has prevalently been used, and a person using a commuter ticket puts the commuter ticket in an automatic ticket examining machine to gain admission to pass a ticket barrier. In some cases, a commuter ticket is used dishonestly to steal a train ride from a starting station outside a section specified on the commuter ticket to a destination in the specified section by using a ticket to gain admission to transport facilities at the starting station and using the commuter ticket to gain admission to leave transportation facilities at the destination without paying for the middle part of the journey. Such dishonest use of a commuter ticket can be detected somehow by recording the time and date of entrance as an evidence for the use of the commuter ticket at the starting station by the automatic ticket examining machine, inspecting the commuter ticket to see whether or not the time and date of entrance is recorded on the commuter ticket, and comparing the time and date of entrance with the time and date of exit.
However, if the user of the commuter ticket passes a ticket barrier where the station staff inspect the commuter ticket visually, it is difficult to detect the dishonest use of the commuter ticket and it is impossible to prevent surely the dishonest use of the commuter ticket.
Accordingly, there has been a demand for a ticket that enables automatic ticket examination and visual ticket examination to prevent the dishonest use thereof, and for a recording means for printing visually recognizable information indicating conditions of use including the date of use on a ticket to be used repeatedly, such as a commuter ticket, every time the ticket is used.
Various reversible displaying elements to which visible information is rewritable have been proposed. Mode of display of those reversible displaying elements changes when energy is applied temporarily to those reversible displaying elements by an external energy source, and the displayed information is held after energy has been removed to maintain a recording state. Thus, these reversible displaying elements utilize a displayed information storing property.
For example, one of the previously proposed reversible displaying elements employs a polymer-fatty-acid film of a material prepared by dispersing a fatty acid in a polymer matrix to utilize the properties of the fatty acid that changes between a white, opaque phase and a transparent phase. Another previously proposed reversible displaying element utilizes the reversible opening and closing of lactone rings of a leuco dye by a developer/subtracter agent. A third previously proposed reversible displaying element employs a polymer liquid crystal.
When those known reversible displaying elements are applied to a ticket, information can be written to the polymer-fatty-acid film at a relatively high processing speed; however, the possible number of cycles of high-speed writing process (for example, a writing process at a processing speed of several milliseconds using a thermal head) is as small as about fifty. Since the reversible displaying element employing the polymer-fatty-acid film uses white opaqueness as a light-scattering state and specular reflection as a transparent state, the reversible displaying element is inferior in the visibility of displayed information. The reversible displaying element employing the leuco dye or the polymer liquid crystal requires several seconds for erasing and is not satisfactory in the number of cycles of rewriting process.
Furthermore, since those known reversible displaying elements carry out both visible information printing (recording) and visible information erasing in a heat-heat mode in which heat is used for both visible information printing and visible information erasing, displayed characters are easy to alter dishonestly when the those known reversible displaying elements are employed in a ticket.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a ticket as a certificate of admission to transport facilities, such as a commuter ticket, employing a reversible displaying element that enables high-speed rewriting process, is capable of enduring a large number of cycles of rewriting process and makes dishonest alteration difficult, and a ticket rewriting apparatus for rewriting the contents of information to be displayed to the ticket.